


Jack, Determined

by TheAmuzing



Category: Xiaolin Showdown (Cartoon)
Genre: Character Analysis, Drabble, Gen, Post Time-travel Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:30:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1691669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAmuzing/pseuds/TheAmuzing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Time-After-Time. The universe shakes itself back in order, but recovery is a process. Especially for a certain Evil Boy Genius.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jack, Determined

It was a lot to take in. Too much, as it turned out.

Being doubled, inverted, accelerated in time—seeing and FEELING what was, could have been, never would be—hearing the mad echoes of the cackling conqueror stretch thin into the distance, holding his own sun-kissed self in his arms just long enough to feel him fade away, becoming aware of two extra lives at once—who WOULDN’T want to run home screaming after that?

And so that’s what Jack did, pushing and shoving the monks aside like a man possessed as he screeched his way back to safety, sanity, LAIR. The trip from temple to house was a blur—he must have activated the helipack at some point, his face burned with windchill—but the evil genius only started coming back to himself when he was within the walls of the manor, panting, gasping, shaking like a leaf at the other end of a wind tunnel.

He called for a Jackbot, voice breaking at the last letter. One was quick to answer. More prepared hot chocolate and cinnamon as Jack clung to solid metal, another arriving with a shock blanket and draping it over his shoulders. The bots gently hover-ushered their teen creator to the established comfort zone, humming at a constant low while tenderly taking his goggles and pack in claw, rubbing Jack’s back as he hiccuped and shivered.

They didn’t ask questions. Not yet. Not for a long time. Jack didn’t know how long he spent drifting in their arms; the Jackbots long ago made a habit of adjusting the lighting of the house to accommodate his clingy childhood fear of the dark. It was sweet, but it came at the price of easy visual time-keeping.

Jack guessed it didn’t matter—time was screwed around with enough lately. A little artificial stability was welcome. It gave him space to process his experiences and come to terms with them.

Jack Spicer had always been a little magically susceptible. Not noticeably so, from the outside, but over the past few years Jack had plenty time to notice that contact with magic usually led to really weird side-effects. Especially when it came to Wu.

It was like the objects left a lingering signature on him after and outside of their use—the Shroud of Shadows loaned him a sneaky edge, the Lotus Twister granted more flexible reach, the Falcon’s Eye made things stand out when he looked for them. Little things, almost inconspicuous, but apparent enough to make the boy wonder.

Each Wu had their pleasantries and inconveniences, but the effects didn’t last terribly long. A fact Jack had been pretty grateful for since the Mind Reader Conch incident. He heard whispers for days, and was jumpier than usual for it, trying to discern his own thoughts from wisps of wind. The lab pulsed music until the walls shook and sleep came only by dropping in place.

The Shadow of Fear had been worse.

And yet, despite the trauma, the curiosity always led him back for more. That niggling need to KNOW things, to HAVE that knowledge to play with until magic turned into science and science into power. He was ambitious, and greedy. It came with being Evil. The fact that it was also fun was entirely the point.

This time, however… Time made things weird. Magically REMEMBERING Time even more so.

Jack wasn’t sure which not-future disturbed him more: the one where he was all smiles and sunshine with the earth-tilling monks, or the one where he was old and bitter with the world in his fist and enemies crushed underfoot. The first ran raw against his chosen nature—the latter seemed to drown him in the worst extremes of his own persona. NEITHER were the future HE wanted.

Jack knew he wanted the world—had bought that notion, that goal, wholesale with every price short of his soul. Time, money, childhood, social standing, craft, name—he either molded it all or cast it away in light of that mad chance: that possibility of MAKING a broken world WORK. And work WELL.

It wasn’t an altruistic notion—Jack didn’t deceive himself on this point. Even if his way managed to streamline and structure and benefit the world as a whole, ultimately he wanted things to work for him, and that was very selfish. Evil, even.

Jack wanted to be too important to ignore. As a conqueror, that was certainly managed. But at what cost?

It took hell to come into power. Many kinds of hell from all sides—between the progressively vindictive tactics of the Kimiko-led monks and the continued ill-treatment from his so-called allies, with no reprieve in sight, Jack had no choice but to snap if he wanted to survive.

It changed him, embittered him, poisoned his mind. At some point ruling the world had become less about ruling the WORLD and more about glorifying in his own supremacy. His very genius went from MAKING things into exercising narrow-minded vengeance, gorging himself in petty spectacle to the neglect of his self and the larger scale.

He aged. He warped. He stagnated. And the world with him.

His future lair was a _prison_ in way too many senses of the word, and his older self didn’t seem to be aware that he was caged, too distracted by the chance to play out his many resentments to prevent descent into a geriatric state. Jack knew he would’ve died that way, given the chance, and he would’ve been content sowing as much misery as he had been forced to own until ultimately it had owned him.

From the perspective of renewed youth, renewed purpose, THAT was terrifying.

Not that being flipped to Good had been a cakewalk, either. In the context of Hannibal, Wuya, and Guan’s hostile takeover, Jack chose to sacrifice himself to help his almost-friends—and confusingly enough he even knew in the abstract how much pain it took for him to come to that point, how much loss had to happen before alternatives ran dry and it came down to him choosing to enter the Ying Yang World to prove his loyalty or to die with his bots as a Heylin casualty.

Surprisingly, Jack could find reasons to believe that he might have been HAPPY with his choice once it had been made, even if he had failed to bring back Master Fung…

But he still stagnated. Just more peacefully, more passively.

Force-flipping to Good had been paralytic. Jack lost his core sense of self, of his genius, and was aware enough of the loss to let it consume him beneath the guise of tearful smiles, forced optimism. Jack bought into the lie of domesticity until he forgot how to build, to fight, to move as his own person.

Without internal stability, everything that mattered was in relation to a group he arguably didn’t belong to so much as _clinged_ to, a sense of “family” in a broken world he couldn’t risk fixing if it meant losing them. It wasn’t until THEY started making moves to change that Jack found the ability to act, and even then only in sacrifice. For them. For Good.

One could argue that it was due more to the Yo-Yo’s effects than a faction-specific fault, but Jack still didn’t believe Good was the way for him. If he was going to be shackled by obligation, he would be the maker of his own chains. Now that he had a better idea what that would mean, Jack found that he did not like the cage he would make.

Jack lingered in these ruminations, thinking deep on the significance of Good, Evil, and where he lay between. When all the thinking temporarily played itself out in comfortable tandem with humming electricity, and the empty cup sat cooling on the coffee-table, the genius was forced to confront a familiar but heavier question: what now?

“I could just. Give up?” he asked the ceiling. His stomach clenched, immediately rejecting the idea. The reaction surprised Jack, given all that had happened, but one look at his gathered bots and he knew it was true. His grin became wry as he shook his head back towards the ceiling. “Nah, didn’t think so.”

Jack still wanted it all. He still wanted magic, knowledge, power, the world. The teen was scared of a lot of things, and now, he had plenty reasons to be afraid of himself. But that was the funny thing with fear—it showed you what was important.

Now, Jack knew that he COULD take over the world. He also knew that he COULD survive what it took to lose it. There was something affirming in both, something he hadn’t had in a long time since he started being kicked down by both sides no matter which step he took. There was strength.

It was enough to get the boy sitting up again, however unsteadily. The bots were there, as always, laying supportive hands on the albino’s shoulders as Jack made his way lab-ward. The genius’s mind spun as he sat down to type all he still knew, preserving the revelations while they were fresh. His fingers moved steadily, with purpose, as he simultaneously dictated to attending bots orders to drag up the old Time Machine plans. He no longer had “travel” in mind. Peeking at temporal possibilities, however, could clearly be useful.

Once Jack had himself accounted for (which seemed to take much less time to accomplish than it had taken to process—possibly a side-effect of time still rubber-banding back in place), the genius turned his mind to the present. The game wasn’t over, not by a longshot, and it would be good for the monks to be reminded of the fact. Jack did not think he had the wherewithal to make a grand stand just yet—he’d need to call in some help.

“Can you get a hold of CB or RJ for me?” he asked one of the Jackbots. “We need to make an appearance.”

Upon finding out that his robotic double and shift bot had already been organizing a villainous blitz-run for weeks now, Jack felt a familiar mix of frustration, pride, and serendipity. Of course RoboJack would be eager to get a leg-up—with Chameleon Bot on his side, negotiations would’ve been a cinch.

Jack sent the Jackbots interested in playing along with his blessing, requesting a stream as he worked on his personal means of looking forward. In something between a few hours’ time, Jack was watching the monks renew the fight, showing off their hard won leader and fresh sense of confidence.

Jack’s grin gradually mirrored RJ’s as the battle ensued. Borrowing from Time After Time, Jack could recognize the monks both as conquered enemies and as former friends. Despite their new leader, the individual moves were familiar, the group tactics readily transparent.

An edge. As long as there was an edge, there was still a game.

If life wanted to keep Jack Spicer from playing, it was going to have to try much, much harder.

**Author's Note:**

> Written to explore how exactly Jack may have been affected by the episode's events, and then why exactly Jack would throw himself back into the fray post series end. If you're here from the RP blog, this fits within my character's canon.


End file.
